Abstract

Ensuring accessibility of digital publishing systems and content for
people with disabilities requires technical standards with built-in
accessibility support, tools that facilitate the production of accessible
content, and widespread awareness of the requirements and resources for
accessibility. As publishing moves into the digital environment, it offers
far more opportunities for an accessible reading and interaction
experience than does traditional print media.

Position Paper

Ensuring accessibility of digital publishing systems and content for
people with disabilities requires technical standards with built-in
accessibility support, tools that facilitate the production of accessible
content, and widespread awareness of the requirements and resources for
accessibility. As publishing moves into the digital environment, it offers
far more opportunities for an accessible reading and interaction
experience than does traditional print media. Potential accessibility
benefits of digital publications cross a wide spectrum of functional
limitations including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, and
visual. For people with some kinds of disabilities, digital publications
may offer their only access to publications. This presentation highlights
several key issues in accessibility of digital publishing today, including
accessibility standards support, digital rights management, development of
accessibility content, and user interface control.

The extent of accessibility support in digital publishing standards is
dependent on the extent to which digital publishing systems are built on
Web standards that already support accessibility, as is the case with the
W3C technologies upon which EPub is based. The digital publishing
community has been instrumental in pushing for improved accessibility
support in Web standards, including the need for longer textual
description mechanisms for complex images. Advocacy for accessibility of
digital publishing standards, and for harmonization among
accessibility-supporting digital publishing standards, therefore both play
an important role in ensuring accessibility of digital publications for
people with disabilities.

W3C/WAI accessibility guidance in the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 is relevant to the development of digital
publications, Web content and Web applications. Since the principles,
guidelines, and normative success criteria of WCAG 2.0 are
technology-neutral, they can be used for any Web technologies. The
mechanisms involved in digital rights management (DRM) typically lock out
users of certain assistive technologies such as screen readers unless
specific provisions are made to ensure access despite the presence of an
assistive technology. Ensuring effective accessibility in the presence of
DRM requires maintaining a balance between the enforcement needs of
copyright management systems and the access needs of some classes of
consumers. In this presentation we will describe DRM design options that
are cognizant of these needs, and provide examples of accessible DRMs
already in use.

Use of complex images, infographics, and data visualizations is another
area where the digital publishing environment frequently presents
challenges for users with disabilities. Appropriate design of mechanisms
for associating longer textual descriptions with complex images has been
an area of contention in Web standards development over the past several
years. Progress is now being made in this area, with a likely scenario
being the co-existence of existing longer description mechanisms with
newer, more versatile approaches. In this presentation we will address
questions of standards harmonization, tool support, and awarenes of user
requirements for longer text descriptions in order to drive increased
implementation of longer textual mechanisms in the digital publishing
environment.

Likewise, effective embedding of rich media is an interested challenge in
the digital publishing environment from the perspective of discovery of
accessibility information accompanying rich media resources. And reliable
interoperability is a challenge in the presence of multiple media formats
given the need for cost-effective transposition between divergent media
formats, and the need for the presentation of re-usable content to be
optimized for display across a variety of different types of devices. This
presentation will also highlight accessibility challenges in user
interface control for accessing content on diverse device types, including
examples of user requirements in this area (for example, how to capture
the intent of "turning a page" when one is not navigating by finger); and
the expected role of standards such as IndieUI that are newly under
development. Finally this presentation will highlight existing resources
that support accessible digital publishing internationally, and suggest
gaps to address these in new work going forward.